


Guarded

by 221b_hound



Series: Lady Akela [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Bit Not Good, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, BAMF Mary, Blackmail, Blood and Violence, CAM doesn't know what he's in for, Canon Divergence - His Last Vow, F/F, Jealous John, Jealous Sherlock, M/M, Werewolf Mrs Hudson, Werewolf Senses, alpha Mrs Hudson, protective Mrs Hudson, silly cubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has become accidentally engaged to Charles Augustus Magnussen's PA. John is pretty bloody unimpressed. But the new nurse Mary Morstan has been flirting with John, and that's not even for a *case*, so neither is Sherlock. But there are bigger fish to fry, and Janine and Mary are both part of the fry-up. And let's not forget that Mrs Hudson has her own ways of protecting the pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guarded

**Author's Note:**

> This will be the last Lady Akela story - I have personal projects on the go so I'm winding up a few of my irregular series here. Thanks for reading werewolf Hudders!
> 
> If you missed the addition to She Wolf, this series [now has a cover!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2702954)

Mrs Hudson does not like the new nurse at John’s clinic. She doesn’t smell right. She smells like lies. And French perfume. She also smells a bit like fresh baked bread too, and Mrs Hudson assumes this is why John seems to like her. That homey smell.

Mrs Hudson learns about this Nurse Morstan when Sherlock accompanies Mrs Hudson to the surgery so that John can give her the annual check-up. Perhaps it’s the woman’s air of danger that John likes, rather than her scent. The silly cub seems fond of that kind of thing. Mostly, she thinks it’s Morstan’s habit of laughing at him, rich and warm, like he has no secrets from her but it’s sweet that he tries, and this charms him.

Though, looking at the way Sherlock is sizing up the nurse with a disapproving pout, it might well be something else going on here. Silly, silly cubs.

“I don’t really need a check-up, dear,” says Mrs Hudson to John as he takes her blood pressure and temperature.

“I know,” he says mildly, “But it doesn’t hurt for us to have a baseline to work from. That incident with the silver knife was nasty and I want to know what to look for if you need help again in future.”

“You did very well, though,” she tells him. Not everyone would have the presence of mind to understand that basic werewolf first aid would be clean the wound, feed the patient raw meat, let the wolf get on with healing herself.

It’s sweet really, his concern for her ongoing wellbeing. Being wolf means she’s in robust health, apart from the gammy hip, but she supposes age is having an impact like it does for everyone, and doing this makes her cub feel like he’s taking care of pack, so she lets him.

Mrs Hudson sits in the waiting room a moment while Sherlock has a private word with John, as John washes his hands between patients. Her acute hearing picks up the sotto voce exchange.

“I don’t trust your new nurse.”

“And how’s Janine, then?” John replies, ignoring the comment.

“Don’t be inane. You know that’s for a case.”

“Don’t be disingenuous. And Mary is a very good nurse.”

“She is not a nurse.”

“Well, she’s doing a very good impersonation of one. Her clinical work is impeccable.”

“She flirts impeccably as well.”

“At least I haven’t managed to get accidentally engaged to her.”

“You’re taking this all out of proportion…”

“Sherlock. You got fucking _engaged_ to a woman you barely knew. How’s she going to feel when…?”

“Oh, don’t pretend this is all concern about some random woman’s feelings. You can’t wait for me to dump her.”

“Sherlock…” John’s tone is dark and full of warning.

“If it makes you feel better,” says Sherlock gruffly, and his voice gets much harder to hear, “When I’ve dealt with Magnussen, I’ll marry _you_.”

“That’s not…” but the sentence dissolves into a rough _mmphff_ and Mrs Hudson can hear the kissing, and she hears the moment when John starts to enjoy it. Then she hears:

“Sherlock, you twat.”

“I mean it. I wouldn’t have allowed Janine to maintain her… misunderstanding… if there was another way to get to Magnussen. I don’t revel in it and if she feels the need to slap me several times when it’s over I suppose I’ll let her…”

“I’ll hold her coat.”

“Be that as it may. Don’t be jealous, John. I’m certainly not sleeping with her.”

“You _kiss_ her,” mumbles John.

“I do,” admits Sherlock, “And it’s awful. She tastes like cherry lipstick, diet cola and smugness. She’s _soft_.” He says that like it’s a major character flaw. The silence that follows indicates more kissing. “I like it when you don’t shave,” Sherlock murmurs.

John’s laugh is low and warm. “You flirt pretty impeccably yourself.” Then his voice is almost inaudible as he suggests to Sherlock where he might put his unshaven face in the evening, and Mrs Hudson can practically smell the sex hormones.

Then that awful Morstan woman taps on John’s door to let him know his next patient is waiting.

The door opens and Sherlock sweeps out, pausing to look assessingly at her. The nurse looks up at him, large-eyed, assessing right back. Sherlock tilts his head slightly, puzzled, then he nods a farewell and strides towards Mrs Hudson.

Outside the clinic, Sherlock’s eyes spark up, like they do when he’s discovered something fascinating.

“Well, well,” he says. He grins down at Mrs Hudson, delighted. He says, “Clair de la Lune, Mrs Hudson. Clair de la Lune!” And he takes her home.

*

Mycroft stops in for tea after his meeting with Sherlock. He knows he doesn’t have to explain anything. She’s been eavesdropping again, and Mycroft clearly approves of their pack leader doing so. He’s an inveterate snooper himself, so he can hardly go pointing fingers.

“There’s only so much I can do to help him,” Mycroft mutters.

“You told him you couldn’t. That you refuse to help,” Mrs Hudson points out, withholding the scones as she gives him a cold glare.

“I’ve told him Magnussen is useful and dangerous,” Mycroft says. He blinks at her, as though that’s meant to mean something. He adds, “Especially to the French.”

“Mycroft Holmes,” she snaps, “Don’t play riddle-me-this with _me_.”

Mycroft sighs. “Other people are vulnerable to this vulture,” he says softly, “And until I know the nature of the danger, I cannot be seen to participate in this venture.”

Mrs Hudson relents and puts the scones on the table, but Mycroft has lost his appetite.

“What hold could that vile man possibly have on Inspector Lestrade?”

Mycroft laughs ruefully. “It is more to the point to ask what hold he has on me. Gregory is exemplary, as you well know. His vices and secrets are no more terrible than those of the average man. Mine, on the other hand… I am not certain that Gregory would be so understanding. My work has required decisions that were merely the best that could be made in an impossible situation.”

Mrs Hudson pats his hand. “Don’t you worry, dear. “

“But I do,” he says, “Constantly.”

He finishes his tea, frowning.

Mrs Hudson thinks Gregory Lestrade will understand much better than Mycroft fears. He’s not a fool, that man, and he has more than an inkling of Mycroft’s role in the government. He’s no innocent, Lestrade, though it pleases Mycroft sometimes to think of him as one. Those Holmes boys, pretending to loathe sentiment and to eschew romance, when really, they are both men of such passion and tenderness, when they but get the opportunity.

*

John does not get to nuzzle his five o’clock shadow into anything delicate of Sherlock’s that evening, because Sherlock has invited the women in their lives for afternoon tea.

Mrs Hudson brings in the pots of tea and coffee, with obligatory biscuits, as requested. Mary Morstan and Janine Fuller sit at opposite ends of the sofa, feet and knees primly together, hands in their laps, body language awkward and tightly contained.

They know each other. Mrs Hudson can smell the same perfume, but also the underlying human scents. The awful Mary and the unspeakable Janine have their scents all over each other. They are in human terms, pack, just as Sherlock realised when he met Mary up close at the clinic.

Mrs Hudson nods slightly at Sherlock, who grins with delight and pours the tea. John’s expression is sliding between startled and grumpy for a moment, until it settles on guarded.

Sherlock pours John a cup of tea and, as he places it on the side table next to John’s chair, leans over and kisses John on the cheek. “There you are, darling. Just as you like it.”

John is so startled he nearly upsets the cup of tea. He blinks into Sherlock’s smiling face, catches a glimpse of how surprised Mary and Janine both look – _surprised_ , not _shocked_ or _upset_ – and realises there’s more going on than he realised. As usual.

Sherlock is still smiling warmly at him. John says, in a tone a third embarrassed, a third going-along-with-this and a third smug as hell, “Thanks… sweetheart.”

Then Sherlock whirls and sits dramatically – how else? – in his chair, picks up his own tea and sips. “Well,” he says as the cup clinks back on the saucer, “Shall I insult everyone’s intelligence by explaining why we’re all here?”

John grimaces and mutters something inaudible, even to Mrs Hudson, though she imagines it’s rude. She withdraws to the hall and closes the door. But the door to the kitchen remains open and she does not go downstairs.

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Janine, “And by the way, you’re a complete bastard.” She has a charming Irish accent and Mrs Hudson can tell she’s not really angry. Real outrage makes the heart beat fast, and Sherlock’s accidental-fiancée is as calm as a summer breeze.

Mary, on the other hand, begins to laugh. “What gave us away?”

“Clair de la Lune,” says Sherlock, “You wear the same perfume. And this morning, you had a long, dark hair on your collar. Yesterday, Janine had a blonde one on her trousers. Of course, in the light of those coincidences, your appearance at the clinic within a fortnight of my cultivating Janine’s acquaintance seems rather less of a coincidence. And when you arrived, you sat apart on the couch and didn’t even attempt small talk, although you did not seem at all surprised to see each other. Hardly natural behaviour for two women meeting for the first time and wondering what they’re doing with an invitation to the home of a consulting detective.” He pauses, and Mrs Hudson assumes he is grinning that odd grin of his; the one that doesn’t reach his eyes and does not even pretend to be friendly, and then he says, “So… how can I help you?”

Mary’s laugh rings out again. “You help us? Seriously?”

“Very seriously,” says Sherlock, “Janine is Magnussen’s PA, but you are clearly nothing of the sort. Your presence at John’s clinic indicates you were keeping tabs on the investigation at our end. Perhaps intending to ask the good doctor out to dinner, since his flatmate was so preoccupied with Janine.” He switches to a soft, sing-song tone, “Poor lamb, that Sherlock. So unused to women, so swept off his feet by her wit and allure. He’s practically proposed to her already.” He resumes his normal speaking voice. “And you must have wondered why it was taking so long for John to ask you out. Did you fear you’d lost your feminine touch?”

“I thought he was shy. I didn’t realise that he was simply… monogamous.”

John chokes on his tea. Sherlock responds, in a smug tone, “John and I are going to be married.”

“Hey, wait,” protests John, “I haven’t said yes yet.”

“you will, though.” It’s Mary who speaks, “You’re clearly madly in love with him.”

“You are,” confirms Sherlock.

There’s a silence in which Mrs Hudson can only imagine the expressions on each face, and then John says in a voice that sounds on the verge of laughter and also perhaps unhealthily possessive. “Yeah, well, sorry love, but your engagement’s off it seems. Due to a prior claim.”

“It’s not like he’s my type,” says Janine sardonically, “I prefer blondes.”

“So do I,” says Sherlock, “And bristles. But this is all beside the point.”

“The point being?” prompts John.

“The point being that Janine and Mary are working together to rid themselves of Magnussen as well. What as he got on you? What secrets of yours does he hold?”

“All of them,” says Mary, all the warmth gone and her tone now brittle, “Everything I’ve tried to leave behind. That’s not my life any more. I’ve tried to make up for it. But he’ll have it all out, and I’ll be dead in a week.”

“I won’t let that happen,” declared Janine fiercely, “He’s not going to use her any more, if I can help it.”

“But you can’t help it, can you?” says Sherlock. “You’ve been working for him for a year and you don’t know where he keeps the evidence. He’s got something on you too.”

“Tell me everything you know,” says Sherlock.

“Why should I trust you?” sneers Mary.

“Because Charles Magnussen is a shark who preys on anyone who is different, and there are few people more different than me and the people I love,” says Sherlock darkly, “He is already making threats against them. He is a danger to everything and everyone I hold dear, and I will use whatever tools within my reach to make an end of him. Even a former black ops agent and her lover, the daughter of a dead IRA informant.”

Mrs Hudson can smell the kind of silence this announcement makes, full of adrenalin. Her nails start to lengthen and a growl begins low in her throat, a warning to any who’d threaten her pack that she can’t help making. Coarse hair has appeared on the back of her neck, rising in stiff stands. Her snout grows and her lips are drawn back in an unvoiced snarl at the palpable sense of danger. She puts her hand on the door handle and pushes it slowly.

“Those are simply educated guesses,” says Mary Morstan coolly as the door opens a fraction.

“I never guess.”

“Yes you do,” she counters, but her voice is relaxed, “You can’t prove it.”

“No,” he concedes, “But somehow, Magnussen can.”

“All right then, Sherlock,” says Janine, her tone oddly warm, “We’ll scratch your back if you can help to get that bastard off ours.”

“It will be my pleasure,” he says, “Now. Talk.”

Mrs Hudson eases the door closed again. She listens to the women speak while Sherlock, and sometimes John, asks questions.

She listens while they formulate a plan.

Much later, after the women leave, she returns to collect the teapot.

“You heard all of that?” John asks.

“Of course,” she says. There’s no point in pretending after all. “Congratulations on your engagement.” She beams at them, delighted, and kisses John’s cheek, and then Sherlock’s. “When are we having the party? Oh, I suppose it had better be after we deal with that terrible Mr Magnussen. It won’t be the right mood, otherwise.”

“Mrs Hudson, you’re not…” begins John, but then he stops and he looks at Sherlock. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock bends to kiss her on the cheek. “If you’re game, Mrs Hudson, you are most certainly welcome to join us. He could be as much a danger to you as to us. And we were thinking an August wedding.”

“Were we?” asks John, but he’s amused, “Oh well. It’s a good month for daisy crowns.”

Sherlock shoots him a sharp look, and John just beams beatifically, and Mrs Hudson giggles, because she knows exactly what John means. Sherlock will look darling with a crown of Helenium daisies. Perhaps blue geraniums for John.

But before then, there are sharks to catch. Mrs Hudson isn’t convinced he’s such a threat to her – even if Magnussen told everyone she was a werewolf, who would believe him? Her long-abandoned crime connections might cause more trouble for her and the pack, though, if he knows of them. He may do.

She sits down with her cubs to plan how they will enter Magnussen’s fortress so they can find and destroy the evidence he holds. She has contingency plans of her own, though.

She doesn’t tell the boys.

*

When Sherlock makes contact, through Janine, offering to sell Magnussen information on his brother Mycroft, Magnussen is sceptical. It’s only when Sherlock says he will accept a trade – information on Mycroft (and therefore the British government) in exchange for the evidence he is holding on Janine, to whom he is engaged - that he agrees to meet with Sherlock.

“She is using you,” Magnussen says, amused by it all, “But please, visit. You will be very welcome.”

At Baker Street, Mrs Hudson transforms into a wolf, and then, because that’s too fierce, she modifies herself to be more doglike.

Sherlock looks wistfully at her. “I had a dog once. Redbeard. An excellent dog.” He pats Mrs Hudson absent-mindedly.

Mrs Hudson moves her dog-lips to say,: “Not your pet dog, dear.”

Sherlock snatches his hand back. “No. Of course not.”

She can scent the worry on him. More than worry. Fear. Sherlock is afraid of this man. Relenting, Mrs Hudson noses his hand. He pats her muzzle carefully while waiting for John to return from his meeting at Speedy’s.

“Did you have any trouble getting that?” Sherlock asks.

“Not precisely. But he’s trusting you with a lot. I’ve never seen him so…” John fishes for the word. “Polite.”

“He knows this is his best shot at protection,” says Sherlock.

They drive the hire car to Cornwall and in the early evening arrive at Appledor, Magnussen’s magnificent glass-and-marble house overlooking the cliffs.

Magnussen greets them with an oily charm that makes Mrs Hudson salivate, she wants so much to bite him. Magnussen lets a man with a scarred face open the front door and waits while the visitors and their dog enter the foyer.

Magnussen’s eye is cold on John. “John Watson. Army doctor. Veteran of Afghanistan.” He smiles, and it’s an awful thing, than smile. “Tell me, Doctor Watson, did you help to kill that family, or merely to cover it up?”

John freezes. He swallows. ”What?”

“An animal attack, the reports say. Wild dogs, apparently, but you know, there was something very odd about it all. You and your friend, Sergeant Bill Murray, made such an odd report.”

Mrs Hudson knows this story. She knows that John and Bill hunted down the werewolf who made Bill were and they killed him, but not before that wolf committed slaughters of his own. She sniffs at Magnussen but he doesn’t seem to pay much attention to her. He doesn’t seem aware of what she is, at any rate. No. He doesn’t know the true story. He is inferring quite the wrong thing.

Sherlock is bristling. “The point of this demonstration is what, exactly?”

Magnussen twists his mouth in that sickening smile again. “That I hold all the cards, Mr Holmes. So you may choose. Will you release your fiancé, or your friend, with the knowledge in that envelope?” He nods at the item crackling inside Sherlock’s coat pocket. “I’ll give you some time to think on it, will I?”

He turns, then pauses to look at Mrs Hudson.

“You brought a dog. Did you think that would protect you?”

“We couldn’t find a dogsitter,” says Sherlock blandly.

“What’s its name?”

“…Hudders,” says Sherlock after the barest hesitation.

“You named your dog after your landlady?”

“I’m quite fond of my landlady.”

Magnusson blinks. He says, “I don’t like dogs,” and then, to the man at the door he says, “Shoot it.”

And the scarred man pulls out a gun and shoots her.

Blood spurts from her chest and flanks, two shots, and she whines, sharp and high, at the unexpected pain of it, and the crack in her ears, before falling still and silent.

John drops to her side, his hands running over her. She can hear the adrenalin-soaked blood squirting through his veins, hear his heart pounding hard, hard, hard, though his hands are steady on her. She knows that he knows she isn’t dead. Ordinary bullets can’t harm her, although they are not comfortable. The holes are healing already, and John is palming the bullets being pushed from her body.

But his distress and his anger are real.

Through her half open eyelids, Mrs Hudson can see the look of horror on Sherlock’s face. She knows that he knows she’s not dead, too, but he’s just as distressed as John. Perhaps he’s remembering that old dog of his. Redbeard. Poor cub.

“Let us retire to the living room,” says Magnussen unctuously, “We have much to discuss while my staff take the rubbish out.”

The man with the gun points the nose of it at them, and her cubs follow that shark down a corridor.

She can hear the discussion. Magnussen’s slow, accented drawl, cold and bored. Not even vicious. Viciousness would take more emotional range than this psychopath can access. Her cubs reply in short, sharp sentences.

The upshot? Magnussen does not want or need further information on Mycroft Holmes. By coming here and offering information, however, they have neatly given him far more leverage over Mycroft than he could have managed. “All else was just rumour. Facts and figures in my head. You coming here… _that_ is on my household security footage. That, my dear fellows, is _evidence_.”

Mrs Hudson listens and sniffs. Here they come then – the staff to remove the rubbish.

She lays very still and watches through her lowered eyelids as a burly man taps a code into the keypad by the door. She hears the lock mechanism release and he opens the door.

“You take the back of it,” says the man to his slightly smaller companion, “I’ll take the front. Christ, what a dog. Fucking huge. You think he could have killed it outside.”

The one that takes the front dies first, but there’s only seconds between them, her teeth taking out the first one’s throat as she swipes a clawed hand at the one behind and tears out his carotid as well. The blood is everywhere, but not a sound has been made.

Mrs Hudson returns to dog form and noses the door open. She stands on the marble porch, leaving bloody pawprints, then trots down the steps to the drive.

The boot of the hire car, a four wheel drive, opens, and Mary Morstan, dressed from head to toe in black with a balaclava over her face, climbs out. Janine, similarly attired, is right behind her. They stare at the dog. Mrs Hudson stares back.

Mary runs on light feet up the stairs, leaps gracefully over the bodies and sets about removing equipment from her backpack. Janine crouches by the two bodies, searches them, and pushes them aside. Janine looks at the dog.

“Sherlock doesn’t have a dog,” she says.

Mrs Hudson pants and tries to look more… doggy.

“My uncle,” whispers Janine as Mary attaches sophisticated equipment to security points in the foyer and the hallway, “Had a funny monthly problem. Until my Grand-da shot him with a silver bullet.”

Mrs Hudson gives up looking doggy and lets her eyes grow tawny.

“I loved my Uncle Sean,” whispers Janine, “And my Grand-da was a fuckin’ bastard, just like my Da.” Janine nods. “So you just get on with looking after your pack, and I’ll get on with looking after mine.” Janine flicks an adoring gaze at Mary, who is grinning like the devil and giving her two thumbs up.

Mrs Hudson decides that she probably quite likes Janine and Mary after all.

“Just keep her away from my cubs,” says Mrs Hudson through her wolf mouth. Janine is not wolf, but she understands pack, oh yes.

“It’ll be my pleasure,” murmurs Janine, and she steps over the pool of blood to go to her girl.

“All hooked up, through the door alarms to the security cameras to the proximity alarms. I’ve disabled most of the layers. This last thing will surge the system and burn it all out. Even the backups. Want to do the honours, sweetie?” says Mary. She offers a control panel to Janine and Janine presses the green button of a complicated box the size of a breadbin that is attached to wires that are attached to the wall in four different places.

Janine kisses her girl as she presses the button.

There is a soft hiss and a crackle and the lights go out all over the house.

Emergency lights come on.

They, too, go out.

Down the hall, there is a shout.

Mrs Hudson takes off at a run, the women at her heels.

John has tried to get a jump on Magnussen, but the scarred man has taken a shot at Sherlock. Mrs Hudson knows this because she can smell the heat of the gun he holds, and the smell of Sherlock’s blood on Sherlock’s arm, and the look of murderous horror on John’s face, and the way Magnussen is laughing. He seems unconcerned about the power outage.

Magnussen sees them. “My,” he says, “That dog of yours is a tough old thing.”

That is, it’s what he begins to say, but before the first syllable is out, Mrs Hudson, snarling, is in the air and then landing on the scarred man, and then it’s hard to hear the snarls past the sound of the scarred man screaming.

She looks up at Magnussen with rage-filled tawny eyes, fully wolf now, and it’s the first time she’s seen Magnussen looking something other than glossily smooth. He is, in fact, terrified. She likes the look on him.

“Stay back…” he says, voice shaking, as he steps back, only to halt at the sensation of a gun barrel against his spine.

“Where is the information you have on Mary,” demands Janine.

“He hasn’t got any,” says Sherlock, his voice filled with an odd mixture of outrage and shame. The arm wound appears minor. “There never was any. It’s all in his head. In his fucking _mind palace_.” The latter he spits out in disgust. “There’s a small cottage in the Cotswolds with the few real items he had. Burning to the ground now, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The lights failing at Appledor were the signal, of course. Mary and Janine didn’t know that, but Sherlock and John had arranged it with Mycroft, of course. Pack stuck together.

“But the rest of it?” Sherlock tapped his own forehead. “A mind palace. With enough detail to make the worst rumours stick.”

Magnussen is panting in fear now, and he’s ignored Sherlock’s disgust-filled explanation in favour of watching their vicious guard dog, whose maw is dripping with blood and whose strange eyes are filled with implacable rage.

“What are you?” Magnussen says to Mrs Hudson.

“Not taking your shit any more,” says Mary. With the gun in his spine, she pushes him to the window. He resists, apparently preferring to be shot in the spine than get closer to the bloodied dog. Janine looks at Mrs Hudson.

“Back up will you, there’s a good girl,” says Janine carefully, “We haven’t got much time and we should stick to the plan.”

Mrs Hudson snarls and shifts aside, though her hackles are still a sharp ridge all down her neck and back. She stalks, stiff-legged, over to Sherlock and presses against his legs. He looks down at her and scratches her head. John comes to stand on Sherlock’s other side. He tears the blood soaked shirt and relaxes fractionally.

Magnussen stands at the window that hangs over the cliff.

“This isn’t the plan,” says Sherlock.

“No,” says Mary, “But the plan was to destroy the evidence when we thought the evidence was kept somewhere in this house.”

“Our plan,” says Janine, “Is to destroy the evidence wherever it is.”

Magnussen’s eyes grow wide. “You won’t dare. The surveillance…”

“Destroyed. From three days ago up to the present. A nasty power surge and electro-magnetic pulse went through all your systems five minutes ago. I’m sure your insurance will cover it.” Mary smiles, and it’s a very dangerous smile. She raises her gun and shoots out the window. Janine picks up the spent cartridge as the wind blows into the living room.

“When I was a little girl,” she says, “My Grand-da used to make me help clean up scenes. I’m very good at it. Very tidy-minded, he said.”

Magnussen glares at her, and then he tries again for that unctuous, evil smile. “Do you remember,” he says, “How I made you stand on my porch and let me flick your eye? You even managed to keep it open, that one time. I rewarded you for that.”

“You whored me to your contact in Monte Carlo,” says Janine, “You piece of filth.”

“Did you think you’d shock me with that?” asks Mary, “Do you think Janine and I don’t already know everything about each other?”

“Everything?” Magnussen asks coldly, and Mary raises the gun again.

Before she can fire, Mrs Hudson, who is tired of the sound of that man’s voice, snarls again, and she rises onto her back legs and reaches out with hands, proper werewolf hands, with opposable thumb. The lights are all out in here, but she can see perfectly well, and she thinks that Mary Morstan may well pretend that what she sees now is a trick of the light, but Mrs Hudson doesn’t really care.

What she cares about his Magnussen, pissing himself, backing away from her, crying out in alarm, tripping on the carpet and cutting himself on a little glass, but not much, because most of it blew out, over the cliff, following the bullet out and down.

What she cares about is the wonderful terror in his eyes and how he nearly swallows his own tongue as she reaches him, stalking towards him on her hind legs, her claws about to wrap around his throat, as she makes her wolf face say to him, “You leave my pack alone, you filthy thing.”

She very much enjoys him falling backwards out of the window and screaming all the way down to the rocks and then the lovely sound of waves on rocks that fills the space after.

Then she assumes her more demure dog-like body and returns to sit between John and Sherlock, just like a good dog.

Mary is staring at her, but Janine is all business. “Are you sure the system is purged?” she asks urgently.

Mary stares at her lover. “Yes.”

“One hundred per cent sure? We can’t risk any of this getting out.”

“One hundred per cent,” says Mary, but she’s grinning again now, “Though we’d best hurry. The purge will have fed back to the security firm’s HQ and they’ll be on the way. You didn’t touch anything, did you babe?”

But Janine is wearing gloves. John too, and Sherlock. But there’s the matter of the blood spatter from Sherlock’s wounded arm.

Mrs Hudson settles that by finding the fine spray and licking it off the floor. Sherlock and John give her funny looks but it’s expedient.

They run.

Mary and Janine take the car – which they hired under false names in Norwich before driving to London and settling into the boot before Sherlock took over the driving. They’ll take the car back to Norwich first, before flying to…wherever they’re going.

John has bound Sherlock’s wound with a torn piece of his own shirt, and they climb into the boot now. Mrs Hudson follows the car, loping at an easy pace, until it pulls up near a path down to the sea. She stands with John and Sherlock, helping to steady the latter who’s a little woozy.

Mary gives Mrs Hudson an odd look, but Janine only squeezes her arm. “She’s just a dog, love. A very good guard dog. That’s all we need to know.”

Mary looks at her girlfriend then, and kisses her, and they drive off without even waving goodbye.

John and Sherlock pick their way down the path, Mrs Hudson offering support as needed, and then walk further and further away from Appledor until they come to the once grand and now dilapidated Cornish Arms Hotel by the sea.

They check into the two rooms they booked yesterday. Suitcases sent ahead sit in each room.

Mrs Hudson likes her room. It reminds her of the ones she stayed in when she was a girl, travelling with her family. Those were innocent days. She takes a long, gloriously hot shower and scrubs her teeth until she can’t taste the blood any more.

In the adjoining room, she hears John tending to Sherlock’s wound, and Sherlock being unusually silent.

“That wasn’t the plan,” he says at one point.

“No,” says John, “But it’s not your fault.”

“You don’t understand,” says Sherlock, “I… if Morstan and Mrs Hudson hadn’t done it, I would have. I would have killed him in cold blood. He threatened to ruin you, John. Your reputation. Your life. He would have done it. For _fun_. To make an _example_.”

And then Sherlock says, “And I’m not sorry. I’d have murdered him gladly to keep you safe.”

Mrs Hudson hears kissing sounds then, and John saying, “But you didn’t have to.”

“You’ve done it for me.”

“I would do anything for you. Even that. To keep you safe. If there’s no other choice, I’d do it again, if it meant saving you.”

“I know,” says Sherlock breathlessly, “Is it wrong that I find that sexy?”

“Probably,” says John, “I’d say we’re both very wrong in a lot of ways.”

“I don’t care,” says Sherlock, and the kissing sounds get more intense, along with the sounds of disrobing.

“Neither do I,” admits John.

Mrs Hudson turns on the radio, because she knows that otherwise she’ll never get to sleep with the sound of her cubs next door practising for the honeymoon.

*

The next day the news is full of the awful home invasion at the millionaire’s mansion. Guards savagely murdered. The millionaire himself missing, presumed dead. No sign of the perpetrators. The household security disabled and wiped by experts. It’s an unsolved, unsolvable crime.

Mycroft tells them there are rumours of international repercussions and conspiracy theories about MI6 and the CIA. Funnily enough, nobody in the British or American governments makes much effort to uncover the truth.

Sherlock is consulted but refuses to take on the case on account of him being busy with planning his wedding.

In August, Sherlock refuses to wear a flower crown, but the hellenium twinned with a blue geranium is a lovely buttonhole for them both.

Mrs Hudson cries, of course. She always cries at weddings, and these are her _cubs_.

She looks at Mycroft and Greg, looking so handsome together, and thinks… June. And pink roses for buttonholes. That will be nice.

After all, she has to look out for her pack.

 


End file.
